by Steve Hellyard Swartz
I’m at a party and a friend of mine says to me:
See that fella over there?
He’s a civilian working for the military
Into bombs or something like that
A woman tells me that her great great-grandfather
Was a lighthouse engineer
She says that he lived and died in lighthouses
I confess that I didn’t know
Just how many people
Become embedded in their profession
But I guess it makes sense
When you see the oil-covered pelican
Trying the best it can
Against all odds
To fly
Steve Hellyard Swartz is Poet Laureate of Schenectady, NY. He is a frequent contributor to New Verse News. Swartz is a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee for Poetry. His poems have appeared in The Patterson Review, The Southern Indiana Review, The Kennesaw Review, and online at Best Poem and switched-on gutenberg. He is the winner of a First Place Award given by the Society of Professional Journalists for Excellence in Broadcasting. In 1990, Never Leave Nevada, a movie he wrote and directed, opened at the US Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
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